Manifest is the Git client for developers who run two — or twenty — GitHub identities. One command center for every repo: triage what needs you, govern the whole fleet, and let your AI ship through a built-in MCP server — with guardrails it can't cross. Free for unlimited identities, forever.
Private alpha. Request access, tell us how you ship, and we'll send a signed build for your OS once you're approved — usually within a few days.
Free, unlimited, forever macOS, Windows & LinuxLocal-first · zero repo data leaves your machine
~0 MB
native binary
∞
GitHub accounts
0 tools
via built-in MCP
$0
core, forever
Why Manifest exists
Every Git GUI was built for who you were in 2010.
One repo. One identity. One context. The mental model is fifteen years old. It's why every option in the category — even the polished, expensive ones — feels slightly wrong the moment you clone a repo under a second account.
Free · single-account
GitHub Desktop
The default. Works fine for one identity, hostile to two. No cross-repo dashboard, no AI, effectively stagnant.
$60+/yr · 400 MB+ RAM
GitKraken
Powerful but heavy. Multi-account is paywalled. AI features arrived late and remain bolted on.
$69/yr · frozen
Tower
Beautiful in 2018, unchanged since. No multi-account model, no MCP, no AI workflow worth the name.
Free · abandoned
Sourcetree
Free and slow. Multi-account is a registry workaround. Most engineering teams have already left.
Feature
Manifest
GitHub Desktop
GitKraken
Tower
Multi-account, first-class
unlimited
no
paid only
no
Cross-repo dashboard
Mission Control
no
limited
no
Built-in MCP server
native
no
no
no
Branch protection setup
3-click wizard
github.com
github.com
github.com
AI can act, not just read
yes, guarded
no
no
no
Parallel AI + human on one repo
isolated worktrees
no
no
no
RAM at idle
~80 MB
~150 MB
400 MB+
~120 MB
Price for full features
$0 / $8
$0
$9+/mo
$69/yr
Mission Control
Start with the work that needs you.
Open Manifest at 9am, read one screen, and decide what you're doing for the next thirty minutes. No tabs. No GitHub notifications inbox. No gh pr list in three terminals.
Reviews waiting on you, sorted by age and account
Your open PRs with CI, conflicts, and approval state
Repos with local changes, unpushed commits, or upstream drift
Fleet
Forty repos. One screen. Nothing hiding.
Mission Control shows what needs you today. Fleet shows the health of everything you own — CI, security exposure, release drift, and branch protection, every repo lined up side by side. Sort it. Group it by account, org, or folder. Select forty rows and act on all of them at once. No other Git client even attempts this.
Fleet · 42 repositories · 3 accounts⚠ 2 criticals across 1 service
CI rollup, Dependabot and secret-scanning counts, latest release and how many commits you are ahead of it, and whether the default branch is protected — pulled for every repo in the background.
Group the way your brain does
Collapse by account, organisation, folder, or status, with live subtotals per group. Forty-plus repositories become legible in a single glance instead of forty browser tabs.
Act on the whole fleet at once
Select any set of repos and pull, push, or protect them in one move. Harden every unprotected default branch across the company before lunch.
Multi-account
Every GitHub identity stays in its lane.
Each GitHub identity gets its own commit author, its own accent colour, and its own keyboard shortcut. Manifest writes the right author into the right repo's local .git/config. Your global config stays untouched.
Commit identity is scoped per repo, never globally
Account colour, shortcut, and token storage stay separate
Pre-push checks catch the wrong origin before you ship
Governance
Set it once. Ship like a bank forever.
Most Git clients hand you a commit button and wish you luck. Manifest hands you the controls a regulated team actually needs — branch protection, exposure tracking, and environment promotion — and sets them up for you, so no one ever has to touch them again.
Protect
Branch protection in three answers.
The wizard reads your repo — which CI checks actually run, whether a CODEOWNERS file exists, how many recent commits are signed — and recommends Solo, Team, or Production. Production is the gold standard: two reviews, code-owner sign-off, signed commits, linear history, conversation resolution, admins included. Every setting comes with a plain-English reason.
Apply it to one repo, or to every unprotected branch in the fleet at once.
See exposure
Know exactly what's bleeding.
Dependabot and secret-scanning counts for every repository, rolled into one honest line: “3 criticals across 2 services.” Drill into individual findings in-app — severity, package, advisory — without ever pulling a secret value into view.
Counts and severities only. Secret values never enter the process. By construction.
Promote
Move code up the ladder, on purpose.
Dev → staging → preprod → prod as a board you can actually read. See the exact commits sitting in each gap, whether each stage's CI is green, and which release is live where. Promote with a saved template so the steps are identical every time.
No more “wait — what's actually on prod right now?”
Beyond push and pull
The whole GitHub workflow, without leaving the window.
Manifest is more than a Git client. Browse and fork repositories you don't own, open and merge pull requests with the merge method you actually want, and review code in a layout built for reading — all from the same desk you commit at.
01
Discover
Find repos. Find developers.
Repo discovery. Search GitHub by language, stars, recency. Drill into READMEs, file trees, language breakdowns, recent commits. Fork, star, or watch with a click.
Developer profiles. Look up any GitHub user — bio, public repos, followers, blog. Follow from inside the app. No tab-switching to github.com.
02
Pull requests
The full lifecycle, in one window.
Open new PRs and drafts. Read inline diffs across files. Merge with merge-commit, squash, or rebase — your call, every time. Review across every account in one cross-repo PR queue.
03
Always within reach
Tray icon, code-focus mode, deep links.
Manifest lives in your menu bar with quick actions for Mission Control, MCP status, and refresh. Code focus mode collapses the chrome for distraction-free review. Click a x-github-client:// link and Manifest takes over.
AI & MCP
Your AI shouldn't just read your repos. It should ship them — safely.
Manifest runs a local MCP bridge that turns any compatible assistant into a real operator on your code. Sixty-nine tools, not read-only toys: open and merge PRs, harden a branch, cut a release, read every review comment. And it physically can't leak a secret or trample your work while it does.
69 tools that read and act — PRs, branch protection, releases, security, repo search
Parallel sessions — your AI and you work the same repo at once, each in an isolated worktree. They cannot collide.
Guardrails by construction — .env files, keys and PEMs can't be committed, not even by the AI. Per-client permissions and a full audit log.
Zero setup — Manifest writes its own guide into CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md and GEMINI.md, so your assistant knows how to drive it on launch.
claude · connected to manifest mcp
claudeWhat PRs am I waiting on across all my work?
2 reviews · code owners · signed commits · linear history
Required checks: build, test · admins included
claudeCommit the .env change too.
blockedRefusing to commit files that look like secrets: .env. This guardrail can't be overridden through MCP.
Pricing
Pay for what you use. Multi-account is always free.
Crippled free tiers kill word of mouth. So we don't do that. Every feature you need to ship code across multiple GitHub identities is on the free plan, and stays there.
Manifest is in private alpha right now — request access to get an early build. These are the plans for when we open to everyone.
Free
0/ forever
The whole command center. Multi-account, Mission Control, Fleet, the full PR lifecycle, branch protection, and environment promotion — everything you need to run your repos without leaving the window.
Unlimited GitHub accounts
Mission Control + Fleet across every identity
Full Git: status, diff, commit, branch, push, pull
Full PR lifecycle — open, draft, mark ready, merge (squash, rebase, merge commit)
The questions everyone evaluating a Git client asks first.
Yes — and specifically, the alternative for people who've outgrown GitHub Desktop because they have a second GitHub account. Manifest does everything GitHub Desktop does (visualised diffs, branch management, push/pull, PR viewing) and adds first-class multi-account support, cross-repo Mission Control, and a built-in MCP server for AI integration. If GitHub Desktop is fine for one identity, Manifest is the upgrade for two or more.
Manifest is in private alpha, so access is approval-gated — there's no public download yet. Request access from any Request early access button (or email hello@manifestgit.com) and tell us a little about how you ship — number of GitHub identities, the kinds of repos you work in. A human reviews every request, and approved requests get a one-time link to a signed build for your platform — macOS, Windows, or Linux — usually within a few days. We do this so we can onboard deliberately and actually talk to early users — not to upsell you. The core is free.
Yes — and it's the standout reason teams switch. A three-step wizard inspects the repo (which CI checks actually run, whether a CODEOWNERSfile exists, how many recent commits are signed) and recommends one of three presets: Solo, Team, or Production. Production is the regulated-grade gold standard — two approving reviews, code-owner sign-off, signed commits, linear history, conversation resolution, and admins held to the same rules. Every setting comes with a plain-English reason, and you can apply it to one repo or to every unprotected default branch in your fleet at once. No other Git client does this; everywhere else it's a manual slog through github.com settings, repo by repo.
Manifest is roughly an order of magnitude lighter than GitKraken (~15 MB native shell vs 400 MB+ Electron app), free for the core feature set, and ships with native AI integration through MCP. GitKraken paywalls multi-account; Manifest treats it as the design centre. If you've been considering GitKraken for multi-account support, Manifest is built for that exact use case at a quarter of the price and a tenth of the memory.
Tower hasn't shipped a meaningful AI workflow and has no multi-account model — Manifest is the modern replacement. Fork and Sublime Merge are both fast, well-loved single-identity tools; Manifest extends that audience to people running two or more identities and adds the Mission Control / MCP layer neither has.
Request early access.
Manifest is in private alpha. Tell us how you ship today, and once you're approved we'll email a signed build for your platform — macOS, Windows, or Linux — usually within a few days. No public download yet; every request is reviewed by a human.
